


Thick as Thieves

by EllaScamander



Category: Jonas Brothers
Genre: Band Of Jonas Brothers, Big Brothers, Brotherhood, Brotherly Bonding, Brotherly Love, Brothers, Confessions, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Family Issues, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Getting Back Together, I'm Sorry, Little Brothers, Love, Male Friendship, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:54:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23379448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllaScamander/pseuds/EllaScamander
Summary: After the Jonas Brothers broke up, Joe is mad. At Kevin at his parents and especially at Nick, who decided to not longer be part of the band. The go their seperate ways but after a while Joe realises that it is not that easy to live life as usual when the person, you spend pretty much every day of your life with, is gone. Then, one rainy day, someone knocks on his door and it's this one chance, to get it all back together. Not the band but the brotherly bond that made them once thick as thieves.
Kudos: 17





	Thick as Thieves

**Author's Note:**

> After I watched Happiness Begins yesterday, this happen.  
> Not really edited and the last time I wrote in english is ages ago.  
> Still hope you'll like it and already sorry for all the terrible mistakes I might have made.

Thick as Thieves.  
Joe stared out of the window. It was raining outside a real autumn thunderstorm and it fit weirdly to the whole situation.  
Nicks words still echoed in Joes head over and over again. “This is not working anymore. I don’t want this to continue. I wanna do my own stuff. Only my own stuff.”  
It was like someone had shut down a door in Joe’s head. I stonewall more than a door actually. It felt, like he couldn’t hear and see anymore, even though, of course, he still did. He still could see Nick’s serious face. He could still see Kevin’s surprise and the sorrow in the eyes of their dad. He could see it all, but he didn’t feel it. He felt nothing in this moment. Only numbness. Incredibly numbness.  
“Anyone anything to say?” Nick’s voice has sounded baffled, like from far away. Emotionless and cold. Kevin just said something like “give me a minute” but Joe hadn’t known how to use his voice anymore.  
He’d tried to get a look from Nick but his little brother had avoided his eyes successfully. His curly hair had seemed strangely flat and straight and Joe hadn’t been able to recognize his brother anymore.

“Joe!” Kevin had given him a bump to get him out of his frozen state of mind. It worked. Strangely and complete not, like Joe would have thought.  
For a brief second, there had been reasonable thoughts. Like “talk it out, there will be a way” or “say that you don’t want it to end and Nick can’t be the only one deciding this.”  
What had come out was “You want it to be over? Fine. Then it’s over.”  
He had left the room and it was over. Really fucking over. Joe still couldn’t believe it. Even now, almost a month later, he couldn’t believe it.  
He got Nick’s point. After the fury, there had been some thinking and he got his little brother. He got Kevin, who wanted to spend more time with his wife and plan a family. He understood Nicks wish to take a solo carrier. What he still didn’t get, was the way, it all ended. 

This talk in this hotel room, somewhere in a city, Joe actually didn’t even remember. Nicks words, his reaction and the fact, that it had actually been all over afterwards.  
No band anymore. No Jonas Brothers. No brothers. They had all left the hotel the day after their talk. Communicated only by text messages. Kevin had zoomed himself out completely. Joe guessed he got home do Danielle and finally started the husband and wife life, he always dreamed about. It was okay.  
Joe wasn’t mad at Kevin. He knew, the moment Nick first declared the Jonas Brothers history, that Kevin would accept it. Kevin didn’t want this tour and stage life anymore. He wanted to spend more days home with his wife he talked about having kids and more privacy. He had talked about everything but music for a long time.  
Joa had come to the same point pretty fast after the last talk. Nick was right. The Jonas Brothers were over. They had been for a while. They had stopped being, what made the band successful. They had stopped being brothers.  
Lord knows, if Nick really realized it first or if it really just had been his wish for independency and a solo carrier, but he was right after all.  
What they had was gone now. Kevin had Danielle, his family to plan and his private life to live. Nick had a thousand plans, what to do with his solo carrier, even though, he never told Joe about them. Joe, right now, had nothing. 

He didn’t want to think about a solo carrier, a solo LP or some engagement as actor. He had thought about all these things, when the band had still been together. He had wished for more free time to try things out. But at this very moment, sitting on the floor by the window, staring outside in the pouring rain, he thought about nothing of this.  
All he thought about was the fact, that he hadn’t seen Nick for over a month. He hadn’t even spoken to Nick for over a month. After their “last” Jonas Brothers concert, they played, only Nick and him, without Kevin, a few days after the official break up, they hadn’t talked to each other anymore.  
Nick had been distanced and cold all through the rehearsals and the concert and had left pretty fast after they were done. Joe had still been too furious, to hold him back.  
He had never not spoken to Nick, for so long. When he thought about it, he was pretty sure, he never had no contact to his little brother for more than two days. Fucking never. Nick and him, they had been thick as thieves, as Kevin had liked to call it. Now they were nothing and it hurt. Hurt more than the fact, they were no band anymore, hurt more, than the way, Nick had decided to let the band end. Joe would have forgiven him in a second, if things would get back to normal afterwards.

A soft knock on the door got Joe out of his misery thoughts. He turned his head. Actually he expected no one. The few people, who had a key to his house in Los Angeles, were far away. Kevin with Danielle, his parents home with Frankie and Nick… well he had no idea. Maybe the maid needed something so he called “in.”  
For a moment he just stared blank at the person that opened from the outside. He was soaking wet, like he had been outside in the rain for a while. Water dripped from his brown leather jacket on the floor and when he pulled back the hood of his dark green sweatshirt, wet curls fell in his face.  
“What the fuck?” This was all Joe was able to say the first few second. He just stared at the wet, dripping person. Nick was pale unusual pale and the wet hair made him look kind of sick.  
“Are you okay?” Joe got up when Nick got out of his jacket and let it fall on the floor. It gave a sound as if a bag would land in a paddle.  
“Never mind my floor, keeping it dry is completely overrated”, Joe said ironically and Nick looked up at him. “My hair is already dripping on the floor, so never mind the jacket. I get it cleaned up later.” Nick answered his voice strangely soft and somehow exhausted.  
Joe hadn’t seen Nick for several weeks, he had been furious and sad because of him, but still, it was like an automatism running, when Joe saw Nicks pale face. He got thinner, that was the next thing, Joe realized in the back of his head, when he went over, took Nick by the right wrist and walked over to the big open kitchen.  
“What are you doing? Hellos are overrated too, or what?” Nick protested but he didn’t try to pull Joes hand off.  
“You can say hello and tell me what you’re doing here after weeks of not talking or even texting, after I got you a towel, dry clothes and at the very first, a glass of orange juice.”  
Nick made a face and for a brief moment, their eyes met. “So obvious?”  
Joe laughed dryly. “Very.”

He went over to the fridge and took a bottle of juice out. He didn’t even really like orange juice he was just so used to have it everywhere he went, that he bought it anyways. He handed Nick the open bottle and left for the bathroom.  
When he came back with a towel, a dry sweatshirt and some jogging pants for Nick, he had already drunk half the bottle.  
“Be careful you’re not raising your sugar level to high.” Joe said with a look at the bottle. Nick frowned. “Thank you for the warning.”  
He pulled away the bottle. “Get changed. I don’t need you to get pneumonia. Why are you so wet anyways you could have parked directly in front of the front door?”  
Nick sighed and grabbed the clothes from Joe’s arms. “I’ll tell you, when I don’t feel frozen anymore, okay?”  
To keep his hands busy, Joe started to make some coffee and just got two cups out of the cupboard, when Nick came back. Without the wet clothes and now with Joe’s on, he looked even thinner. Joe realized it with small sorrow but didn’t say a word. He had no idea, what Nick even wanted here and they were certainly not on a “let’s talk about your health” level.  
“Thank you. You’re saving my life, it’s warm and contains caffeine”, Nick said with a smile on his face and took one of the cups out of Joes hands. “That’s what I’m doing since you were born, aren’t I?”  
It felt so easy to joke with Nick, as if the last year had never happened, but it had.  
“What are you doing here? I had no idea you were even in town.” Joe sat on the couch and Nick got cross-legged next to him and took a sip of the coffee.  
“I hadn’t any idea I would be in town until I got in my car yesterday evening.” Nick’s answer surprised Joe. “You drove here? All the way from… from where?”  
“Portland.”  
“You’re kidding, aren’t you? This is what, a twelve hours drive?” Nick grinned for a short moment. “Fourteen.”  
“Why?”  
There was silent after Joe’s question for a moment, then Nick looked up from his cup of coffee. “To see you.”  
Joe stared blank at Nick. “To see me? But why? Why didn’t you call? Text? Caught a flight? I don’t know, but anything else instead of getting in your car and driving for fourteen hours through the night, alone. Where did you sleep anyways?”  
“I didn’t. I thought it might be too risky to stop by in a hotel alone. Guess someone would have recognized me, right?”  
“You didn’t sleep. Meaning you sat in your car for fourteen hours, driving here, without sleeping, or eating or anything, to see me? Are you suicidal or something?”  
Joe felt a mixture of anger, shock and confusion. Nick laughed. It was a quick, rough laugh, but it was an honest one. More honest than many others Joe had heard over their last months as Jonas Brothers. 

“Seems like I did. I wanted to call. Actually I wanted to call ever since the day after our weird last concert.” Nick’s voice was soft now and the way he sat there, his hair still wet and his face still pale as snow, with dark rings under his eyes, hurt Joe. After all, this was not anyone. This was Nick.  
“So why didn’t you? Call? Text? Visit? Anything? “  
Nick bit his lip and looked down on his feet. “I was scared, that’s why. I knew you were angry and you had every right to be. I was pretty sure you didn’t want to talk to me.”  
Joe sighed. “Yes, I was angry. I was fucking angry you threw away all we had just in a glimpse of an eye. Without even thinking about Kevin and me.” For a moment, the old fury rushed back into Joes head, but when he looked at his little brother, it was gone as fast as it came.  
“I know. I wanted to explain. I tried to explain to Kevin after you left. I tried to explain it to Dad. I guess they understood somehow, at least after a while, but…”  
Nick stopped and when he put the cup on the table next to the couch, his hands shook.  
“Still hypoglycemia?” Joe asked. Nick shrugged. “I guess, yes. The pump gave the normal amount of insulin, but I didn’t measure my level ever since before I went in the care, I haven’t eaten or slept and I guess caffeine helps me to stay awake but doesn’t make the rest any better.”  
“I have to ask you again, are you suicidal or something? You could have called. Anything that didn’t get you in life danger would have been a start.”  
Nick rolled his eyes. “Life danger is a little over the top, don’t you think? I didn’t pass out due to hypoglycemia since I was fourteen or something.”  
“No need to change this now. Let’s get to the kitchen and make something to eat. I guess it’s plenty of food left, I actually wanted to invite some friends over, tonight.” Joe got up. Nick kept sitting where he was.

“I can go, and come back tomorrow or something. No need to change your plans.” Joe held out one hand.  
“Nick, I’ll only tell you that one time and I swear if you tell anyone else, I will deny it. I fucking missed you. More than I ever thought I could miss person. I never spent more than two days without talking to you, before all this happened. I don’t care that I have to cancel my plans I don’t even really care what you want to tell me, that couldn’t wait a flight or phone call long. Actually I still can’t really believe you’re here. So get up now and help me with the cooking, I really need you to get more color in your face, I get a shock every time I look at you, man.”

Nick grabbed Joes hand and he pulled his little brother to his feed.  
For a moment they looked at each other, then Nick reached out, an pulled Joe in a hug.  
“All I want to tell you is, that I’m sorry. For the way it went, for the way I acted. I was selfish and idiotic, but I felt so overwhelmed that I didn’t know how to do better that time. I want to tell you, that I fucking miss you, too. I thought about calling you every day. Yesterday I facetimed with mum. She asked me if I had heard about you and that you seemed so sad and tired the last time she saw you. When we hung up, I wanted to call or text you, if we want to meet up and talk about everything. I didn’t because I was too scared you’d say no. And I didn’t wanted to wait a few days to fly over to LA because I feared my own courage would be gone by now. So driving was the only solution.”  
Nick hadn’t let go of Joe the whole time he was talking and Joe hugged him himself.  
“I did this all the wrong way Joe and I’m sorry. I want you back. As brother and as best friend and I’m so scared now, with the Jonas Brothers gone, this won’t be able anymore, because you can’t forgive me.”  
Joe pulled Nick a few inches away and looked at him. He remembered, when they were little and Nick always came to ask, if they still would be best friends, after they fought over something.  
“Thick as thieves, remember?”, he said softly and winked at Nick. He smiled for a moment and then nodded.  
“Thick as thieves.” 

Half an hour later, they sat at the kitchen table, eating pasta and drinking beer.  
“Was it true, what mum said? About you being sad?” Nick asked between two forks of pasta and had a pretty guilty face.  
“I guess, yes. I really couldn’t cope with all of it coming to an end so fast. I didn’t know what was next I was pissed at you for calling a quit, I was mad at Kevin, for not taking my side and at dad, because he knew and didn’t warn us. I was mad at everybody and mostly at myself. I knew my reaction after your announcement was childish, but I was too proud and hurt, to admit it and when you never reached out to me I thought, this was it. End of being brothers, end of being Nick and Joe, end of being inseparable. It was hard to accept something gone, that was there for like ever.”

Nick sighed. “I’m so sorry, still. I felt so trapped in this Jonas Brothers thing, I knew Kevin wasn’t really in anymore, I missed what the three of us as brothers had, I stopped having fun and I was annoyed by you two so much. It took me a while to realize, that it wasn’t being around you and Kev that made me angry and annoyed, that it was the way we treated each other. We stopped being brothers and I guess somehow I wanted to save this, by calling a quit to the Jonas Brothers, but I did it all the wrong way and ruined it completely.” 

Joe shrugged. “I guess we were all in a not very happy spot and annoyed by each other. If you wouldn’t have initiated the breakup, who knows if Kevin wouldn’t have done it a few weeks after? Or if all the three of us would have ever spoken to each other again, if we’d continued the way it was.”  
Nick yawned and put the last fork of pasta in his mouth. “You can go to sleep if you want to. There’s a spare bedroom next to mine. We can talk tomorrow”, Joe said but Nick shook his head.  
“I’m tired, but I couldn’t go to sleep right now. I’m way too happy to have you back actually. I’m a little scared I’ll wake up in my hotel room in Portland and all of this was just a dream.”

“Maybe you should drink some more juice. Guess the low sugar level makes you hallucinate.” Joe grinned, but pulled out a glass for his little brother anyway and filled in some of the left over orange juice.  
“We can go over to the couch. I got the new Fifa for the PlayStation yesterday, we can try it out.” Nick smiled and nodded. “I’m always in for Fifa.  
You could see that Nick was tired, because he played way slower and with less concentration, as usual, but it was fun anyway. Still Joe had to ask after a while if everything was okay.  
“Are you good? I mean health wise? You look still pale and you got skinny. I know you hate it, when we keep asking you about your health, but still, the difference to a few weeks ago is huge.” Nick put down the controller and sighed. “Am I really so much thinner than before? I don’t even really realize? Mum said the same thing to me, when I last visited.” He didn’t sound annoyed, just a little exhausted maybe.  
“It’s a difference, yes.” 

Nick bit his lip and took a sip of his beer. “I don’t know. I guess the whole breakup and not talking thing got to me more, than I wanted to admit at first. I wanted to show, that I can do perfectly well on my own and I guess I worked, to get my mind of all the things that happened. I went for runs a lot and didn’t really eat regularly, I just didn’t felt hungry. I went on meetings in between, didn’t sleep very much and well and so my lifestyle wasn’t really the healthiest one these days.” He shrugged. 

“Guess I need to watch out for you more, from now on. Maybe I’m going to make you check in via facetime once a day to make sure you’re okay. Or I make you move in with me here, don’t know yet.”  
It was meant as a joke but Nick kept a serious face. 

“So, you’re not mad at me anymore?” He sounded a little like the 6 years old Nick, that came to Joe before bedtime to make sure, they won’t have a fight anymore.  
“You’ve been an ashole sometime the last few months. But I’ve been, too and I guess everyone is every once in a while. You still are my little brother and you still are my best friend. Nothing changed here. Nothing will ever, I guess. We learned what happens when we fight for too long now, don’t we?”  
Joe smiled and Nick smiled too. Then he yawned again.

“Look, Joe, I’m sorry, but I’m really, really tired. I can take a hotel room somewhere in the city and come back tomorrow, when you still want to go out or something tonight, never mind.”  
He got up and looked a little like he hardly would make it in the first floor. “Get upstairs, your bedroom is next to mine. I lend you a shirt for sleeping, so you won’t have to get out in the rain once again.”

Nick looked a little unsure but Joe pushed him forward. “Will you go now?”  
Nick laughed and made his way upstairs. Joe looked after him still in a little disbelief. It seemed like he had his little brother back.  
He grabbed a bottle of water and a spare charger lead for Nick’s phone and got one of his old shirts out of his room, before he got over to Nick’s.  
His brother already sat on the bed and when he pulled on Joe’s shirt and his dried curls fell in his face, he looked so much younger than he really was.  
“Sleep well, Nick. If the weather is good tomorrow, we can go out for brunch and you can tell me, what you were up to, the last few weeks.” Nick nodded. “Sounds like a plan”, he mumbled, seemingly, already half asleep.  
Joe looked at him for a moment. “This isn’t a dream right. When you feel all better tomorrow, you still will stay and we still will be okay?” The question sounded childish and dumb, but Joe had to ask.  
“Thick as thieves, Joe”, Nick mutter .


End file.
